A1 Welding: Vanished Dreams

I am saddened.  Thirty-five years ago when we first moved here, there was this abandoned building on the corner of the highway near our house, with an "A1 Welding" sign out front of it.  Mysterious and strangely inviting.  Then for a few years, it became a second hand store where Charles and I would browse for art materials or studio furniture that we would cart back to my place or over to his place on Cain's Lake.  After that, it was a video rental store for several years.  We rented many a video for the kids there.  Later it began selling tropical birds too.  But for most of the past decade it has remained empty.  Its interior dark and dusty and littered with old wooden shelves and wire bird cages.  Almost every time I'd drive past, I'd think "I oughta try and rent that for a studio in the winter."  Throughout the years, it never changed appearance . . . always unpainted and seemingly ready to collapse.

Well, a week or two ago it did.